


I Feel You Touch Me In The Pouring Rain

by novel_concept26



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-06 15:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's just how it is, when you're with a girl who runs in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Feel You Touch Me In The Pouring Rain

Title: I Feel You Touch Me In The Pouring Rain  
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.  
Spoilers: None.  
Summary: That's just how it is, when you're with a girl who runs in the rain.  
A/N: Title taken from The Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love."

  
Brittany pulls her into the rain, and the first thing Santana catches herself thinking is, _Soggy sneakers feel weird_. The second is, _Mom’s gonna kill me for ruining my hair right before church._ The third is, abstractly, that her mother will probably kill her anyway just for trying to get away with wearing sneakers _to_ church in the first place. In the end, it becomes acceptable for Brittany to drag her out the back door and through the yard’s gate, because at least if they’re running, it will prolong meeting her maker a little longer.

‘Cuz, seriously, her maker is damn scary.

Brittany pulls her out the door, and she’s laughing, which doesn’t surprise Santana in the slightest. Brittany is always laughing at something. She was laughing at a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip when Santana met her, and she was laughing at an old Happy Days rerun last week when Santana came over unannounced. Brittany laughs, and Santana understands without question that her best friend is happy—the through-the-wringer-and-back-again kind of happy that a person can only be if they are genuinely loved, and hopeful, and kind.

Brittany is all of those things, and the fact that she doesn’t even know it just makes the whole picture burn a little brighter in Santana’s head.

Brittany’s hand tugs at her sleeve, pushing it forcefully back off her knuckles so pale fingers can interlock with band-aid-covered ones. The rain somehow makes her hair shine with a bit more gold, makes her eyes look glossier than on a normal day. Brittany with her head tilted back, tongue sticking out to accept each drippy kiss the sky offers, is somehow so much more beautiful than Brittany sitting bored in math class, swinging her feet up around Santana’s chair. Brittany always accidentally leaves bruises when she kicks, but Santana doesn’t mind. Math does that to people.

Denim clings to her thighs like her four-year-old cousin, begging for another ice cream cone, and Santana shivers. She’s not a rain-runner, not the way Brittany is. If Brittany were at home where she belongs, Santana would be warm and aggravated inside, getting reamed out by her mother over the hole above her left knee, and the smudges on her high-tops, and how that pretty dress in the closet still sports its original tags.

Brittany drags her out of the house and into the rain, and Santana has never felt luckier for it. Sometimes, she catches herself thinking that people who _don’t_ have a Brittany are scarred in a way they’ll never quite realize. People who don’t have a Brittany are missing out on something Santana can’t even imagine herself lacking. She doesn’t have a name for it yet, but she can feel it, edging lightly at the back of her tongue. Rolling forward an inch every couple of weeks, or months, or years. Sooner or later, that miracle of a word is going to leap forth, and Santana will finally be able to explain the sheer depth of Brittany’s presence in her life.

She wonders, as she watches Brittany spin in the middle of the sidewalk, her shoes skidding through a brownish-gray puddle, if caring about somebody can ever have a bottom. Oceans, lakes—they only go so far before shuddering to a stop, before your toes find muddy, awkward purchase. Hell, even volcanoes have to stop somewhere. That’s just reality. Things in the world only run so deep.

She wonders if there’s a limit to her own depth, to how far Brittany can dig her toes into Santana’s life before she butts up against the ground level. Does the deepest of deep ends _really_ have a place to stop? Or will this just keep traveling downward, her expanding interest in the way Brittany’s hand closes around her wrist to spin her in giggly circles acting like a shovel to a place that doesn’t exist? Is it possible that she might keep bearing dark earth back over her shoulder and just go, go, go, chipping through mud, and clay, and rock, until she finds something no person has ever grazed before?

Brittany twirls her like the dancers in those old movies they watch sometimes, and Santana closes her eyes. It feels like a dream, the pepper-sprinkle of droplets pirouetting from her eyelashes, the steady, unconscious warmth of Brittany’s soft skin. Brittany is always soft where Santana has callouses, cheerful when Santana is frowning. Brittany always pulls her outside when the thought wouldn’t have occurred to her otherwise, and Santana thinks it’s sort of like that grace they’re always talking about in church. The grace of something you don’t expect, and maybe don’t really believe you even deserve, but it comes for you anyway. It comes for you with a big, beaming smile stretched across a thinly-freckled face, and you have to let it take you wherever it will because…

Brittany dips her backwards and stumbles, nearly toppling them both into the muddy grass lining the curb. Santana tosses her head back and roars with laughter, even as Brittany is hauling her back up, one arm supporting her around the waist. If she lands in a puddle, there really will be hell to catch. Her mom will have them _both_ dead and hidden behind the swimming pool before anybody notices their dinner places are empty.

Brittany does all the things that never occur to Santana to try. She puts on strange makeshift plays starring her cats, and wears goofy hats to school, and climbs up the slide backwards. She draws pictures and hands them to complete strangers, and picks tomatoes even though she hates how they taste, and tries to invent her own language when they go to Santana’s Abuela’s house.

And, even with all the crazy things she does, there are some things Brittany never seems to consider. Stuff Santana doesn’t even think about doing before she does them. She never tries to punch Finn Hudson in the throat when he steals her cookies, and she never wins the high-leap contests on the swings. She never even jumps.

Santana jumps. She’d like to see the sky, to memorize the treetops in the moment she’s given, every nest and squirrel in turn. and she swears each time that this will be the day. But it’s no use; she has no control. Her eyes clamp shut, right up to the inevitable moment of slamming back into the earth, every single time. She buckles on impact, landing on her knees—dusty and already bleeding—and looks up to see Brittany, with her pumping legs and her silly hat. Still swinging. Every time.

They race through the rain, arms windmilling, feet pounding and bouncing from the sloshing pavement, and Santana decides there can be no deep end to being with Brittany. There can be no ultimate depth, no dead end sign at the base of the tunnel. The stuff Brittany does—the way she laughs, the gentle bite of her fingernails in the soft skin of Santana’s wrist, the concerned knit of her eyebrows as she peers down from her swinging throne—is too much to fit into one lake, or ocean, or volcano. It runs deep, deeper than Santana could ever hope to comprehend. She gets that, and maybe it should drive her nuts, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes her laugh.

She doesn’t do the things Brittany does. She doesn’t turn a blind eye to Hudson being a jackass, or teach her cats to play Mimi and Roger, or lean out of her sleeping bag at four AM and whisper, _I love you_. She doesn’t tell people how she feels, or smile at strangers, or watch the world as she soars. It doesn’t occur to her, that these might be options.

Brittany takes her hand and drags her out into the rain, and as they bend into one another from laughter, brushes her lips fleetingly across Santana’s. Her eyes sparkle, her cheeks neon with delight. Being surprised doesn’t even cross Santana’s mind.

There isn’t a final depth to how things are with Brittany. There isn’t an end in sight to this little world, the one that’s only big enough for two. The one where her mother might kill her, sure, but at least she’ll have been touched by grace in the meantime.

That’s just the way it is when you’re with a girl who runs in the rain.


End file.
